Monday, June 09, 2008

Leftie Extremists vs. Rightie Extremists

I'm sometimes given grief for coming down so hard on the extremists on the Left and for not paying so much attention to the extremists on the Right. My usual response to that is, which extremists on the Right are causing any trouble? Abortion clinic bombers? How many years has it been since we've seen them? Fred Phelps and his gang of weirdos? That's 25 people whom no one takes seriously. Is it people on the Left or on the Right who riot during WTO gatherings?

Honestly, who on the right compares to Earth First, or to the Democratic Underground/Daily Kos types, or to thesepeople?

8 comments:

The problem is that the DNC will care what these idiots do and shape legislation around not ticking them off. I remember a few years back in one of my daughter's teen magazines, there was an article written about a girl who was a paid protestor at the G7 Conference in Seattle. She talked about how to avoid tear gas, passive reaction to being grabbed and so on. I canceled my daughter's subscription. So this has been going on for awhile. Doesn't it give you warm and fuzzy memories of Chicago in 1968?

Ah yes, because we hear about those groups on the news every day. And their following is probably in the (gasp!) double digits! This assumes those groups are allied with the political right, a premise I'm not ready to accept.

Well one group is reactionary and the other is radical. I think just from principle the radical group would be more "trouble causing." I think the extremists on the Right are less into the destructiveness of the Left, but their damage is still far reaching. I mean you'll always have your Neo-Nazi groups, but their power isn't exactly booming. I see the real trouble coming from the Christian Right and the focus on influencing negative opinions of other religions, races, and sexual orientations that what their followers commonly are. The ability to manipulate the thoughts of the public is much more powerful than freeing animals from a testing lab, but one makes for a more interesting news story.

Other then in the rhetoric of the extreme left, any of those groups have serious, or any, input to policy or to candidate selection? So let's try again: any comparable groups on the right to Code Pink, NOW, NARAL, Moveon.org and the zoo of even more extreme organizations typified by PETA and Earth First?

Allen,You hit the nail on the head. The KKK etc., are fringe groups that exercise minimal influence with anyone. Code Pink et al., are deeply influential within the Dem party. As for the Christian Right, I understand your fear of injecting philosophical discussions of morality into the daily discourse. Words are far more fearful than mob actions reminiscent of the 1960s.

I was 12, I remember it well because people were looking at each other all goggle-eyed wondering when Dallas was going to burst into flame. Heck, my Dad bought a gun-which wasn't something regular folks did back then.